Co-Sleeping With A Toddler – A Medical Professional’s Point Of View (Dad Post)

As long as I’m hiding behind my nom de Web, let me just say: I’m a very lucky guy. I’m sleeping with two women. Every night.

Bed-sharing, co-sleeping, whatever you want to call it; that’s what my wife and I do. Our toddler daughter sleeps snuggled in between us. Daytime naps happen in “the big bed” too, usually with me doodling around on my iPad, the toddler bumped up against my side. There are some trade-offs; I haven’t had blankets up to my chin since she came along, and now and then I catch a tiny foot in the face, but overall I have come to realize something: doing things this way is awesome.

It started in the hospital on the night our Small Female Human™ was born, when I had to walk over to her little plastic bassinet to soothe her crying every 15 minutes. My wife was recovering from a C-section and brief but significant bleeding scare, and since at that point I was the one not mainlining morphine, I was in charge of the baby. I made the executive decision that we all needed sleep, so I just carried her, plastic tray and all, over to my stupid little fold-out dad bed on the floor next to my wife’s hospital bed, put one hand into the bassinet, gently patting the newborn kiddo all wrapped up like a burrito, and we all slept much better.

As new parents, we didn’t intend for that to be the standard procedure (but I was obviously open to the idea from the beginning). But today, given the chance to write “anything you want about being a dad,” I thought it important to put it out there, loud and proud: sleeping with your kid next to you is not weird, it’s not some hippie 1960s granola thing, it’s not unhealthy (says the guy licensed to practice medicine, and yes that includes babies and kids)… and it’s really nice.

The cuddly, bonding aspect counts for a lot, but there are other, more practical benefits too. You can prevent rather than have to deal with waking episodes, and you spend time with the precious little angel when she’s at her most angelic. I’m also finding it’s easier to calm her down during the day when she skins a knee or faceplants on the floor, perhaps because being picked up and held is even more tightly interwoven with being calm and safe than it is for crib-sleeping kids.

Back when we were expecting, we had a vague idea of how we wanted things to be (as I imagine all parents do). Once the SFH arrived, I think we did pretty well with adapting rather than getting stuck on our own expectations. We set up the baby’s room, separated from ours by a nice long hallway. We bought a good monitor. We put the baby’s crib in our bedroom, intending to eventually move it to hers. What we didn’t count on was that the crib would be so utterly rejected as a place to sleep.

At first, there were struggles. On a few occasions I got the baby so totally asleep with rocking and singing that I could lay her in the crib for a nap… but those naps were never as long as bed naps, and she almost always woke from them screaming her lungs out. These days, when we wake up she babbles contentedly and says “Da-da.” I know what I would rather do, and it’s nice to know that she agrees.

I do occasionally get flashes of jealousy when people talk about putting their kids down in a crib for 8 or 10 hours at a stretch. I also suspect most of those people are bullshitting me, and/or themselves, at least a little bit anyway. The idea of “sleep training” strikes me as mostly valid and reasonable, if it’s done right, but at the end of the day, not our style. It’s certainly not the SFH’s style, she has made that abundantly clear.

I should hasten to add, we don’t let the kid push us around. Attachment Parenting, which is basically what we do, is not about that. I’m with her all day, and I don’t negotiate with crazy people, no matter how cute they might be. She has limits, she has a schedule, and as she gradually learns to connect cause and effect, she will understand that there are consequences to her bad behaviors. Chuck your toy down the stairs, the toy gets a time out and isn’t available for a while. Throw your jelly toast on the carpet, no more jelly toast. Simple, direct, and predictable.

Yes, we still have waking and crying at night, when there’s teething pain or a loud thunderstorm. But that would happen anyway, and if we had the SFH in her own crib, then what? Pick her up, soothe her, put her back down? The only difference then is where to put her down. Let her cry? Yeah… again, not our style. I’m no expert, but the idea that parents can be relied on to be attentive and responsive, except during certain hours, most likely seems weird and scary to a small child. It does to me, at any rate, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts.

I’m really lucky in another way too: I can work only part-time, and still contribute. If you factor in what we’re not paying in day care expenses, it’s even better. Part of what we get with this Attachment Parenting deal, in exchange for a big time commitment, is the ability to be unusually flexible, and I think it pays off in a happier, sweeter kid.

I see the bed-sharing as another of the many developmental phases the SFH will go through. Sure, it’s going to be a longer one, and has overlapped other phases and milestones like getting teeth or learning to walk. When she’s talking full sentences and is capable of reasoning, I think then it’ll be time to talk to her about her own room, and her own bed. It’ll be presented as something that bigger kids get to have. I suspect that when the time comes, she might ask if she’s still little enough to sleep with us.

At that point, the answer will be yes… but just for a little while more.

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